Lucky Hit
by Lyse's Pieces
Summary: What would you do if you had all this in front of you? You’d stay. But I’m gonna go ahead and hit. [SpotRace]
1. Prologue

**Rating:** T

**Summary:** What would you do if you had all this in front of you? You'd stay. But I'm gonna go ahead and hit.

**Disclaimer: **I own nothing and I make nothing.

**Characters: **SpRace!

* * *

"Bad night's sleep?"

Mush hitches up a corner of his mouth and grins at Racetrack, rubbing his palm into the boy's glossy hair before stepping on to claim water at the wash counter.

Racetrack recoils at the touch, crinkling his eyes in discomfort. "Whoo, Jesus," be breathes, scratching his eyebrows. He can hear the other boys banging around the washroom, the blood and energy beginning to pulse through their veins and warm their joints. Racetrack continues to slump, uncharacteristically, uncharged, on the foot of his bed, groggily scraping his palms against the scratchy sheets, pushing them into the folds of his hands. "Yeah," he sighs, bunching the muscles in his legs to heave himself from the bed. "bad night's sleep."

_Where bad_, he thinks in what would be a cynical tone if wool-thick fog hadn't obstructed his mind from clear thought, _means none_.

He pushes his fingers into the corners of his eyes and slides them up to his brow bone, shiny spots of grease rubbing off on his fingertips. He gingerly steps towards the washroom on his stiff, tired legs, little by little remembering snatches of the previous night's game.

_Where game_, he thinks in the same tired tone, _is more or less, an understatement._


	2. Chapter 1

Some men gently dipped their shoulders.

Some boys spit-shook.

Racetrack Higgins and Spot Conlon traded insults.

"Don't know why you continue to step into these parts, Higgins," Spot's voice snarled, but his face would bear a warm, amused grin. "You're not lookin' so lucky."

"Judging from your empty pockets after last time, Conlon," Racetrack returned the affront as well as the grin, "I'd say looks can be deceiving."

Spot pleated his young face into a smirk before reaching to clap Racetrack on the back. "Doing okay?"

Racetrack dug out a dilapidated deck of cards tied together with an old bootlace, "Better than you, anyway. Send my regards to the artist." Racetrack swiped his nose with the back of his wrist bone, gesturing to a yellowing bruise that stained Spot's jawbone.

Spot chortled deep in his throat before muttering, "You can thank him yourself when you get back to Manhattan."

Race widened his glassy eyes in surprise and emitted a short laugh that sounded more like a bark to Spot's sore ego. "Didn't think Cowboy would ever land one on ya."

"Yeah, well, it was a lucky hit."

It was Racetrack's turn to smirk as he studied Spot's marred profile. "Naturally." He leaned his back against a dock post, the rough-hewn wood scuffing the soft skin on the small of his back. He strummed the frayed edges of his cards with the heel his ink-smudged, waiting for the other boy to speak.

The Spot's eyes scanned the sky and gave it an approving nod. "It's a nice night. Too stuffy inside."

"You wanna play on the dock?"

"No?" Spot challenged.

"It's fine. Air's stiller than dead man." Racetrack said as he wiggled down the post, wincing as the wood bit into his neck.

"It was a good scuffle, y'know. Between Jack and me. Damn near bent his face sideways." He eased himself down onto the weathered boards, taking care not to impale his fingers on the wooden daggers.

Racetrack emanated a disapproving _clucking_ noise in the pit of his throat; more for the sake of irritating Spot than anything. "Guess Jack just heals quick." He looped his tongue around his back teeth and raised his eyebrows at Spot, passing the deck back and forth between his hands. "Name the game."

"Blackjack. I seem to remember beating ya down last time, so I call dealer." Spot picked the deck from Racetrack's willing hands, brushing his scabbed knuckles against Racetrack's and jerking at his cold flesh.

"Chrissake, Race, cold hand ya got there."

"Cold hands, warm heart." Race smiled.

Spot chuckled and shook his head, his spine feeling as if Race's cold fingers had just wrapped around it, shooting sharp bullets throughout his body. "What's it mean when ya got warm hands?"

"I trust you can reverse roles." Race turned his face to the side, gracefully missing Spot's stiff, cupped hand. "Now Jack," Race began absently, watching the other boy flutter the cards within themselves, "he's got these real sweaty hands, y'know?"

Spot grunted.

"Like dough. Real damp and squishy. Whaddya assume that means?"

"He's a pansy. Naturally." Spot clapped the cards down in front of Race and tapped them with two fingertips.

Race ignored the cards in front of his and continued thoughtfully. "And David, his hands are like paper. Like canvas, you know? Stretched real tight over his bones and all. What about that?"

"He's fucking royalty. Happy?" Spot rolled his eyes and tightened his lips. "The last thing I want to do is sit here and shoot the shit about ol' Jack and whoever the hell he's running around with."

Racetrack smirked and sat back, his cards forgotten. "Sore subject?"

"No." Spot bit, impatiently scraping his nails against the deck. "I don't give a damn what you talk about."

"'Cept when it comes to Cowboy?"

"'Cept nothing. Pick up your goddamn cards."

* * *

**Please review!**


	3. Chapter 2

Racetrack remembered when was thirteen, when he first started working for Pulitzer and "moving his product". Racetrack always put that way, Spot mused, his euphemism making it sound like his was doing something far more important than selling fucking newspapers for some hotshot.

"So anyway," Racetrack continued, forgetting the cards in front of him, "I used to always sell on this little corner down by the abandoned warehouse, right? This was a month or so before I really broke out into Sheepshead. I mean, I went there and all, hell, I was practically famous there, but I was still thinking I had to keep a low profile, right? Couldn't run the rest of the newsies off just yet, you know how it goes when you-"

"Je-sus, Race, get on with it." Spot moaned. _Just like Higgins_, he thought, chewing his lower lip. _One he gets started, he doesn't stop._ It wasn't that Spot minded listening to Racetrack: most of his stories were interesting enough to rival war veterans and the red-noses down at the bars; and whenever he got excited, Racetrack could work his face like a rubber mask, illustrating his tales.

"Right. So there was this girl, right? Mary or Marie or Sarah or something. Can't remember. Anyway-"

"Mary or Marie or Sarah?" Spot broke in, "How do you get those mixed up? Guessing girls took to ya better when they was as tall as you."

"Or Susan. That's not what I'm saying." Racetrack forged ahead with his story, and Spot wasn't sure if he hadn't heard his insult or was just choosing to ignore it. "So every day, her mother would give her a penny for a pape, right? And every day she'd give me this little piece torn off from the pape the day before. Sometimes she'd write stuff on it, real sweet, classy stuff. Sometimes she just ripped these recipes out of her mother's cookbook and gave me those."

Spot laughed out right. "The recipes, Higgins?" he gasped, smothering himself with his palm, "other guys were probably getting something good, and you got recipes?"

"Well, she did." Racetrack declared, "I thought it was real nice of her. Showed she cared about me and wanted me to take care of myself. Real sweet and all, that girl. She was thinking of me and all, y'know."

"Marks for creativity, I guess," Spot managed, using a smirk to mask his laughter, "most girls just write little notes."

"She did that, too." Racetrack said quickly, a slight blush creeping up his neck, "Point is, she thought of me. It's real nice when somebody thinks of something like that, y'know? Cause they know it's something you like and they go to all that trouble and send it to you. What's a girl ever done for you, Conlon?"

"Definitely something better than recipes."

"Yeah? Doubt that. Bet you'd feel pretty lucky if you got recipes from anybody."

"If I was a cute, thirteen-year-old kid, maybe." Spot conceded.

"Now you're just a horny, sixteen-year-old bastard." Racetrack's voice snarled, but his face grinned good-naturedly.

Spot shrugged and then grinned himself. "Recipes. Whoo, Jesus."

* * *

**Do review, please!**


	4. Chapter 3

"Watch, Spotty," Racetrack explained, amused at the other boy's darkening face. Spot hated when you called him "Spotty", because he said it made him seem too much like "a goddamn kid", which just gave Racetrack more motivation to poke the flames of the nickname. He'd first started calling Spot that as nothing more than a tease-tactic during a brutal game of poker to cut the chilled tension. After the cards were packed away that night, Racetrack discovered that there was far more pleasure to be had in teasing Spot, for no reason other than to watch him grow increasingly irritated.

Smiling, Racetrack continued, "and watch good. This might just getcha a nice pot of dough one day." He took note of the cards in front of him, a nine of spades and a nine of clubs. "What would you do if you had all this in front of you?"

Spot shrugged impatiently, clicking the card on top of the deck with a torn fingernail. "Stay."

"Right. There's the difference. There's where you're gonna lose your house one day, Spotty."

"Stop calling me that, for Christ's sake."

Racetrack plowed ahead, well practiced in ignoring Spot's protests. "What I'm gonna do, I'm gonna go ahead and hit."

"You've got eighteen."

"I also didn't stutter. Hit."

Spot muttered something about a risky bastard and a funeral before conceding to turn the top card over. His eyes widened in stunned incredulity as Racetrack's narrowed in victorious smugness.

"There she is," Racetrack remarked simply, plucking the final puzzle piece from Spot's shock-loosened fingers. "Three of hearts."

"How'd ya know that one? Got it marked or something?"

"Nope." Racetrack strummed the three cards with the ink-stained callous on his thumb. "Just a lucky card, y'know? When you can feel stuff? I can usually feel when this one's coming up."

"Lucky card?" Spot repeated, his face falling into its default smirk. "More like a lucky hit."

"It's a nice card," Racetrack compromised, shrugging his shoulders as if any gambler held a favorite card, "Nice number. Nice suit."

"You're crazy, Higgins."

"I'm also rich. Pay up, Conlon."

* * *

After enough light had drained itself from the horizon, Spot and Racetrack set the deck off to the side, the night air too hot to retire inside and too young for Racetrack to retire to Manhattan. "So," Spot drummed out a rhythm-less beat on his kneecap with his fingertips, traces of ink soaked into the rough skin, "how long've you been seeing Jack?"

Racetrack jerked up in surprise. "What? I ain't 'seeing' nobody. What made ya say a thing like that?"

Spot sucked in a piece of his cheek and said with a simper, "I dunno, just a thought. Manhattan's street-tough leader and its cocky second-in-command. You two pretty boys running around the city," Spot cracked his voice an octave higher, "_oh_-so-in love."

"_Je_-sus, Spot," Race moaned, "shut it before I give ya a bruise on the other side to match."

"Ya wanna know why Cowboy hit me?"

"Christ, no."

"Okay." Spot gathered his legs in front of him, bunching his muscles in anticipation. He loved telling stories, especially ones he'd improved. "So it was just Jack and me, right? We was standing near the bridge and I says-"

"Spot, I don't _care_." Racetrack snapped.

"Fine." Somewhat hurt, Spot rocked back on his hands, squeezing his shoulder blades together and popping the tension from his back and knuckles. "Thought you'd wanna know." Through the tinted air he could see Racetrack: compact, sharp-featured, relaxed and slumped. "Didn't your mother ever tell you not to slump?"

Race snagged a bit of his lip with his upper canine. "Did your mother ever tell you not to be a jackass?"

The other boy leaned his face in close to Racetrack's, so close he could see a small white scar stretching across the bridge of his nose in the twilight. When he spoke, he angled his jaw so that his breath gently billowed onto Racetrack's face. "My mother told me a lot of things, Pretty Boy."

Racetrack balanced his expression impeccably, his trained face expertly mixing amusement and coolness, "I'm not the one putting my face close enough to kiss me."

The muscles in Spot's jaw tightened along with his arms, the sinewy muscles near his shoulders tightening like fiddle strings. "I could just as fast hit you."

"No other ideas?"

Spot twisted the lock of their eyes, working his jaw back and forth. "Nope. Nothing."

Racetrack's veins hummed with a hot tension. He glanced at the sky, a deep, moist violet and reached for his deck, running the worn edges of the cards under his thumbnail. "In that case, _Spotty_, I'm gonna start heading back. No point in staying somewhere where there's nothing to be had." He over-exaggeratingly tipped the end of his had and started to rise.

"Ah, c'mon, now, Higgins," Spot said, and Race humored himself into thinking he could hear a spritz of pleading to his voice, "You know there's always something to be had in Brooklyn."

"Not tonight." Racetrack lifted his thumb to his mouth and clamped his teeth around a hangnail that had snagged itself on his hat. He jerked his head to the left and pulled his hand down quickly, dropping back to the dock and cursing loudly. He spit the ripped nail somewhere on the dock and clamped his newly-injured thumb in his palm. "God_dammit_."

"What the hell'd you do?"

"Hangnail," Racetrack whimpered, "ripped it to the goddamn quick."

"Yeah, I've done that before," Spot reflected lightly, watching Racetrack tentatively lick his nail line. "Hurts like hell."

"No kidding." Race grunted.

"Here, let me see," _This is almost embarrassing_, thought Spot, watching Racetrack mouth his sore thumb. He gingerly took a hold of the other boy's hand. _Damn_, he inwardly smirked_; the boy sure did a good job getting rid of hangnails_. Racetrack had managed to remove the offense, but he had ripped a good chunk of his nail off in the process. He lifted Racetrack's thumb to his lips and lightly brushed them against the raw skin.

Racetrack jumped back as if Spot had bitten him, "What was _that_, Conlon?" he spat.

* * *

**As always, reviews are appreciated as well as encouraged.**


	5. Chapter 4

For a moment, Brooklyn's leader let himself think that Racetrack was just jerking away because of his raw finger. Spot anxiously scraped the hell of his hand against the dock, and watched Racetrack's face close the gap between them very warm, very real presence. Spot swallowed the thick, bitter syrup that had flooded his throat at the other boy's sudden reaction.

With his sore thumb still clamped in the pillow of his palm, Racetrack continued to close in towards Spot's nose, until he could see the sun's light freckling spilling onto the apples of his cheeks, "_What_, Conlon?"

"Just that," Spot's mind scrambled, searching for a good finish to his sentence, "y'know, no one leaves Brooklyn feelin' indifferent."

A warm, yellow laugh suddenly enveloped Spot, blossoming at his ears. Racetrack sat down again beside Spot, jostling his shoulder with his own, "Jesus, Spot," Racetrack declared, laughing into his chest so that the scant traces of light illuminated the scare across his nose, "with lines like that, it's no wonder you work with your fists."

A torrent of blood filled Spot's face as he ordered, "Shut-up, Higgins, I just doing you a service."

A quizzical look weighed down Racetrack's face, as if he were deciding whether to laugh or scowl, "Across the river, we usually just tell 'em to keep it wrapped up for a while. Didn't know big, bad Brooklyn kissed 'em."

Spot drove a canine through his lower lip like a stake into soft ground. His stomach lurched as he heard himself affirm, "Well, y'know, just the ones we like."

A curious look conquered Racetrack's features as he shook his head, "You're crazy, Conlon."

"And you're the most irritating sonuvabitch I've ever met," Spot bit back, a glint gathering in his eyes, "we'd make quite a team."

Spot's eyes became fascinated with the white line stretching across Racetrack's nose, glowing in the shards of light. It reminded Spot of a crescent moon reflecting off the East River, or a deep score into fine mahogany. He asked curiously, "Race, how'd you get that scar?"

The pale band stretched with Racetrack discomfort as he shrugged, "Lucky hit," Racetrack tore at the fibers in his sleeves with his rough fingernails, careful to keep his gaze where the other boy couldn't reach it.

Spot rubbed his tongue against a raw patch his teeth had ripped into his lip, studying Racetrack's profile. He looked at his fingertips, stained with ink and capped with ragged fingernails jammed with grime, and brushed two of them against his lips, tentatively touching them to Racetrack's scar and stating simply, "There." Taking care to strain affection from his voice and lace it with poise, he lowered his voice, "Hope it gets better."

Racetrack jerked back again, as though Spot's fingers had been searing grease; his neck looking as though it had been stippled with red paint, "Stop it."

"Stop what?"

"That," Racetrack sputtered, nervously rubbing the cuffs of his sleeves between his fingers, "whatever you keep doing. Makes me nervous."

"Fine," Spot shrugged, feigning indifference, "just tryin' to be friendly."

A chortle sounded from the pit of Racetrack's through, "Marks for effort. Stop being so friendly already."

Spot relaxed back onto his elbows, rotating his shoulder until it yielding a relieving _pop!_, releasing the tension that had curled into his spine. He lazily turned his eyes to the sky, imagining that he could see the pictures in the stars, "Why's it make you nervous, anyhow?"

"Just 'cause… y'know, nobody'ss ever kissed my wounds except my mother."

Spot snapped his eyes away from his fantasy constellations, "Has _anybody_ ever kissed you 'cept for your mother?"

"Strange question," Racetrack replied, shifting uncomfortably.

"Just a goddamn question," Spot muttered, grinding his fingernails into the folds of his palms.

"Who the hell asks that kind of stuff?"

"Just making friendly conversation," Spot snarled.

"Rest of Brooklyn always as _friendly_ as you tonight?"

"Just to the ones we like," Spot confirmed irritably, sighing at the repetition.

Leftovers of Racetrack's earlier laughter struck Spot's ears like grave on a brick wall. Racetrack finally stood up and brushed the dirt from his worn knees, "Guess I'll be safe walkin' back tonight."

Spot stood up as well, smoothing his hands over the seat of his trousers, "Be careful, anyway."

"Yeah. Sleep well, Spot."

"Night, Higgins."

Spot glanced back over the water, listening to Racetrack take three steps away. Then, Spot heard a pause, a whisper of grinding wood, and three more steps, followed by Racetrack calling out his name.

"Yeah?" Spot turned his head to find his face almost too close to Racetrack's; the light leaking from the city emphasizing his carved features.

Racetrack took an uncomfortable step back from Spot and snapped his fingers to color in the silence. Finally, he said, "Now, I'm curious. Why'd Jack up and hit you?"

Spot looked down, and the back over the water, letting out a bitter chuckle, "So, it was just me and hit, right-"

"Spot," Racetrack interrupted with a smile, "I said I was curious, didn't say I had all night."

"Fine," Spot grumbled tetchily, crossing his arms before commencing his story, "So, we was just standing over on the bridge there, closer to the Manhattan side. And I says, 'Jack, you still seeing that Sarah girl?' And he says no, they broke up ages ago."

"That's true," Racetrack broke in, clicking his front teeth, "Jack decided he didn't like her as much as he thought he did."

"I didn't _know_ that," Spot declared, shaking his head as his voice gathered speed, "so I tells him, 'what, she dump you 'cause you weren't the best at something?"

"You're such a witty guy there, Spot."

"And Jack says no, _he's_ the one who ended things. So I tell him, 'What, she wasn't giving it up no more or something?' You know what he told me? Jack told me that Sarah's too _classy_ of a girl to give anything up, and that's why he liked her."

"Jack's always liked strange things. You should see the kinda stuff he likes on his sandwich."

"Yeah," Spot continued, the pace of his voice matching the mounting intensity of his story, "so, finally, we're just standing there, right? And Jack's not saying nothing else about Sarah, _nothing_. So, I asked him why he was so happy he wasn't getting nothing from her. And he just repeats that Sarah's a nice girl and he's glad she's that way, 'cause only nice girls are worth a damn. So I says to him, I says, 'Jacky-Boy, if she's so damn nice, how come you don't want nothing to do with her?' and then, I'm getting all cocky and tough, right? And I keep going and says, 'You know, you're probably the only guy in all of goddamn New York that'll sit around and wait for her. Why'd you just throw her out to the sharks, where's something's- or someone's- bound to happen to her?"

"So, that's when he hit you?" Racetrack asked.

"No. that's when he _threatened_ to hit me. Said something like, 'I'll hit you if you don't shut-up.'"

"Sounds like a threat to me," Racetrack consented, shrugging.

"But like I told you, I'm getting all confident, right? I didn't think for a second that Jack'd actually haul off and hit me. So I keep talking, just shooting the shit, right? And I say something like, 'Ol' Davey as tight as she is?'"

"And _that's_ when Jack hit you," Racetrack finished wryly.

"Yep. That's when he hit me," Spot repeated, the last of his bitter chuckling dripping out, "don't know what I said, I was just making conversation."

"You should've tried some of that _friendly_ conversation you were using on me tonight." Racetrack smiled.

"Yeah," Spot conceded, smirking down at Racetrack, "didn't even mean what I said."

"About Dave or about me?"

"Dave, I guess," Spot shrugged, retraining his eyes toward the water.

"You guess?"

"Yeah."

"Good enough. Anyway, I gotta be heading back," Racetrack coated his lips with his tongue anxiously and tentatively reached up to brush them against the bruise still stained on Spot's cheek, "hope that gets better, too." A small, diffident smile clutched the corners of Racetrack's mouth as he turned to return across the river.


End file.
